Everyone knows the value of inbound links from topically related third party websites for SEO. What about outbound links from your website/blog to other websites/blogs? Any value there to law firm websites and blogs from an SEO standpoint?
The experts say yes (albeit stressing that outbound links are not as important as title tags and inbound links) -- provided you follow certain guidelines. First, it is important to realize that outbound links define the community to which your site belongs, which is important to help search engines determine the relevancy of your site to search queries, and the extent to which your site is an "authority" on certain topics. As such, you want to link to quality, topically-related pages, and AVOID linking to unrelated sites, or worse, "spam" sites like link farms (wouldn't want Google to think you are associated with them, would you?)
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger offers the following additional guidelines for outbound linking (although Rowse also stresses that one should not take these guidelines as gospel or get too worked up about them to the extent they interfere with the readability and style of your blog):
- don't link excessively (as with any SEO strategy, excess can be counterproductive and appear "unnatural" to the search engines)
- use appropriate keywords as text within the hyperlink (since the words you use as the link can help both you and the site you’re linking to)
- link to high ranking sites (some argue this maximizes the SEO impact - although, of course, as noted, the sites should be relevant to your topic).
Rowse also argues that outbound linking in moderation can improve reader satisfaction because you are providing your readers with access to resources with which they otherwise may not have been familiar (on the other hand, excessive linking can annoy readers because you don't let them build a "train of thought" since they are busy checking out all of your links ).
Additionally, outbound links demonstrate expertise to readers since only an "expert" well versed in the topic being discussed would presumably be familiar with all of the relevant resources that you reference.
Finally, Rowse says, outbound linking can help you build relationships with other bloggers who will appreciate the inbound links to their sites (and hopefully link back to you).
(For similar thoughts see this more dated article on outbound linking).
In conclusion, I'd also add that when linking out, it is helpful to use the "target=new" tag in your hyperlinks. This will cause a new window to open when readers click the link, while leaving your own website/blog accessible within the original window.
One cool tool related to this discussion that you may want to consider - Snap - which provides readers with a preview of the destination site associated with a hyperlink. See also websnapr.
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